Courses

In today’s schools, teachers are expected to meet the needs of diverse students and colleagues, and yet many teachers report feeling unprepared because they do not have the social and cultural competencies needed. This interdisciplinary synchronous online course Mindfulness as Human Action: Mindful Cross-Cultural Action Research uses qualitative and quantitative grounded theory to identify cognitive processes of information as behavioral changes demonstrating cultural competency occur. This work requires explicit teaching and practice around becoming aware of unknown assumptions. This course does not use mindfulness practices, such as meditation, yoga, etc.

Course Objectives

Students will achieve the following Program Core Competencies as vital objectives

“Before Mindfulness into Action, I felt very stressed. It felt like I had no control over my own life. And overall I did not feel good about myself. This is a time for midterms which could be very stressful and which requires a lot of studying that could drain a lot of energy. This is something that normally would have made me very stressed. But surprisingly I felt very calm, and I think that the Mindfulness into Action process helped me cope with that stress much better than what I would have done without it.”

“One thing that I didn’t expect was how major the changes have been for me. I really think that the techniques have helped to get on the right track. Also one other thing was that the changes have been both mentally and physically. I did not expect that my bodily pains and my headaches were going to disappear. I was surprised how fast the changes were happening and how prominent they are. The first changes I discovered were that I became less stressed and I felt more happy. My mood was better and more stable. I have also been struggling for a long time with pain in different parts of my body because of tensions due to stress and anxiety. Those pains disappeared quite fast, after a few days after I started using the techniques.”

“To get rid of the anxiety was something that I very much thought would be almost impossible. I have struggled with it for years, and it is amazing how much better I feel with the Mindfulness into Action process!”